Entrepreneurship ... to Where?

Entrepreneurship. It is a word that has clearly become a trend in the collective imagination in recent years and that, sometimes with greater or lesser success, is being adopted across the board by a generation that has decided to bet on innovation in each of its practice areas.

In our country, there is great momentum, in the same way as in countries where there is a moderately developed to advanced technological capacity, to develop businesses based on technological or commercial innovation. In Mexico, in recent years, a favorable environment for innovation has been fostered through the development of public policies that encourage the generation of technologies that allow the development of an entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem. This effort is aimed at promoting the creation and development of innovative micro, small and medium-sized enterprises to foster value chains and job creation. This initiative, which has been going on for several years, has allowed the development of technological clusters in several areas of our country that have contributed significantly to regional economic development and have been able to identify and develop connections between the public and private sectors.

However, despite this favorable environment, entrepreneurship is still an adventure and the great challenge is to identify where to direct entrepreneurial efforts. In today’s world, there are leaders who are examples of how to do entrepreneurship correctly and who, in fact, have become inspirational for those who are on this path of innovation. People such as Tesla, Bezos, Jobs, Musk or Zuckerberg, among many others, are or were entrepreneurial and disruptive leaders in each of their industry sectors. As recognized leaders, they have generated many of the trends that today mark the path of technological development and, therefore, the direction in which most entrepreneurship is focused, without forgetting that what dictates business trends are technological change, social transformation and what companies and consumers need.

Nowadays, technological trends have migrated from traditional topics to innovation processes in more cutting-edge technologies. A few decades ago, efforts in technological development were still related to mechanical matters. Since the Industrial Revolution, this trend has been progressively reconfigured. From mechanics, we have been evolving toward chemistry, electricity and basic communications, medicine, electronics and telecommunications. Currently, we are in areas such as biotechnology, information technologies and artificial intelligence. In almost 150 years of technological evolution, we have been migrating from one technology to another with increasing speed.

While not all other industries have lost importance, the most relevant are related to the pharmaceutical industry, biotechnology, robotics, microtechnology and materials technologies, while in the field of electronics and communications, data transmission, management and storage systems are leading innovation and entrepreneurial processes.  However, although these technological development lines are trending, a new wave of concepts and technologies that promise to redefine the conception of our future and move from fiction to pure reality are vigorously appearing on the scene.

Artificial intelligence, big data, blockchain, the metaverse and the Internet of Things are adding challenges for the technological future. The convergence of "traditional" technologies with these new trends will mean that what we once only saw in science fiction will be present in our daily lives.

Thus, biomechanics, robotics, personalized medicine, green technologies, virtual reality and the development of communications and information technology will be at the center of discussions in the coming years, and many industries that we had not even imagined will soon emerge. Initial examples of this are the large number of technology-based companies that in just a few years have managed to become market leaders and, in many cases, redefine the market itself. Increasingly, companies are emerging that have been able to read the needs of the end consumer and offer solutions to those needs, generating a relevant impact on the economic sectors in which they participate. Transportation, lodging, modes of traveling and even how we have fun have been modified as a result of the offer of differentiated services provided by these disruptive companies.

Just as we have seen changes in the way we consume in the aforementioned sectors, we will also begin to see substantial changes in other technological areas. Today, there are already companies focusing their efforts and innovation processes on drug design, 3D printed prostheses, improved decision-making in agriculture, clean energy, waste management, geolocation, wearables and a long list of other activities in practically all of our daily lives.

And just as technology has evolved, entrepreneurs and companies in general, both large and small, have also grown and are now betting their future on innovation. They have become aware of the importance of generating knowledge and developing technology but also of the need for proper legal protection of these technological and commercial developments. In this future that we foresee (or that we have already reached), intangible assets are a fundamental piece for the growth of companies and for them to reach the levels that companies have today, which in a relatively few years (and many others without the relatively) have developed multimillion-dollar industries from an innovative idea, a little capital, a valuable brand and, yes, a lot of effort.

Harari says in his book "Sapiens" that what allowed homo sapiens to have a differentiated development from all other species that have populated this planet is the ability to imagine things and that has given us a privileged position in the history of the Earth. It is the result of that ability to imagine things that has developed the world to the point where we are today and it will be that same ability, together with our collaborative nature, that will allow us to continue creating and developing our future in the best possible way.

Entrepreneurship means imagining, believing, creating, and acting. The important factor to see positive results from these efforts is to identify opportunities and develop projects.  However, as has become clear, that is not an easy task. Nothing could be further from the truth that setting up your "own business" based on an idea is synonymous with success. To achieve this, we must innovate, protect, collaborate, shield companies, create brands with value and, above all, we must work hard to put this idea into practice, and even harder for it to become a disruptor in the market. Therefore, today more than ever we must think outside the box regarding what we should look for to improve our current living conditions.  Ultimately, it is our responsibility to leave a better world for future generations.